Quotes About Mortality

The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.

More was lost than mere life and existence.

Inde lacessitum primo mare, cum rudis Argo Miscuit ignotas temerato litore gentes Priamque cum ventis pelagique furentibus undis Conposuit mortale genus, fatisque per ilam Accesit mors una ratem.

Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason Socrates defined philosophy as thanatou mélétè (preparation for death; Plato, Phaedo, 81a). Indeed, without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing.

It has been seven years since you died. Of course what I'll say next is that time has flown by. I got old. All of a sudden, de repente. I walk with difficulty. I even drool. I leave the door unlocked in case I die in my sleep, but it's more likely I'll go endlessly on until I get put away someplace. I am already dotty.... It's not so strange that I talk to my cat but I feel silly because he is totally deaf.

When your parents are dead your own death faces you.

well, I guess it is natural when one is dying to sort of sum up what has mattered, what has been beautiful.

I get mad at everyone because they are working, living. Sometimes I hate you because you're not dying. Isn't that awful?

On the plane to Mexico City, I thought about how death shreds time. My ordinary life had vanished.

I was sixteen for twenty years. By September I will be a ghost.

It's the continuation of everyone's childhood to see these young children who grow up full of life, full of intelligence, full of a sense of wonder. And within an instant they're gone from this world. It's terrible.

What fools these mortals be.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

Anyone can stop a man's life, but no one his death a thousand doors open on to it.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

The hour which gives us life begins to take it away.

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

O miserable minds of men! O blind hearts! In what darkness of life, in what great dangers ye spend this little span of years!

Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortals live dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.

[The people] were given over in troops to disease and death.

What came from the earth returns back to the earth, and the spirit that was sent from heaven, again carried back, is received into the temple of heaven.

To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.